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        Quick note: This page is a first draft. I reserve the right to use bad grammar and make spelling mistakes, as well as not have my ideas completely set in stone.

That said...

        Hi. I'm Ken Prince. Or Kenny. Or Kenneth. It just kind of depends on whether your a friend, my mom, or writing me a ticket for speeding. Oddly, most people just end up calling me Knuckle Head.

        If you're reading this, you're probably either interested in what In Shining Armor is about, or you're interested in what the guy who writes it is about. Either way, I'll do a little explaining here.

        I'm not trying to knock of Lord of the Rings, King Arthur, or any other stories I've come across. I'm just trying to create an interesting world, where I can focus on the lives of the main people who live there. Though I have a great deal of plot, I'm going to try to make this more of a character driven story.

        There will be plenty of sword fights, magic spells, dragon blasts, and everything else that gets ratings, but I really want to make the tale as good as the action. So if it gets to slow for you, please just nag in there, it'll pick up again soon.

The Place:

        The world of In Shining Armor is something of a warped mirror of our own. On one side, the continents and nations exist almost as a tribute to the most memorable places and eras of our own world, showing them as they are best remembered from the days of old.

        The land of Availas stands in the era of reminiscent of English knights, while the northern reaches are populated by Barbarian tribes and Viking raiders. The lands of Sprathalous has the feeling of the Roman empire, and the nearby Breace has a very Greek mythos about it. The Asian realms are ruled by Warlords and their Samurai, and the desert lands stand under the power of Sultans, who can look across the great rivers to see they pyramids of the Phethetian nations.

        But there is a darker land, with no equal in our own world. Misreleth, a continent unto itself, is a violent and harsh land, where everything is dangerous and twisted. This is the land where orcs live by the sword, in fear of the dragons circling above. There are endless ridges of volcanos here, spewing darkness into the sky. For everything bright in the other nations, is a dark and dirty equal here.

        The two sides of the world have been largely unaware of each other since the beginning of time, separated by the endless oceans. But a few centuries ago, a great quake rocked the entire world, driving the seas apart and pushing the continents toward each other. The volcanoes spewed lava at unbelievable rates, forming jagged land bridges between the continents, opening the way for Misreleth to better lands, and bitter wars.

Story:

        The current point in the story occurs about a century after the land bridges opened between the human and beast nations. It has been a century long, full-scale war, which it ended recently in a stale mate. The war ended not in peace, but simply because neither side had enough people left to fight on..

        Gunther was one of the greatest warriors of the final battles, fighting almost without stop for over a decade. With the war finished, he's left the military, where he has been haunted by his final failure...

        I could say more, but I don't want to give away any secrets just yet...

About Me:

        When I was a kid, I read too many comics and played a few too many RPG's. (Wow, I'll bet you didn't see that one coming!) Anyway, I had all that sci-fi and fantasy stuff thumping about in my head, and it seemed that whenever I picked up a pencil, some of it ran to my fingers and jumped out on a piece of paper.

        That lasted until I "grew up." I conformed to what I thought society wanted me to be, getting a degree in business, and working my rear off to make end's meat. Between learning the lessons of love, life, and livelihood, I'd managed to all but forget the kid inside me who really just wanted to grab a sword and go save the world - fortunately, he never forgot about me.

        After moving to Chicago and back, and going through plenty of stuff along the way, I got tired of being grown up. With the help of my cartoonist girlfriend, Kat White, I learned to chill out and get back doing what I love. So after going through a bunch of concepts, I finally came up with In Shining Armor, which seems to be working out ok.